The trouble with most traditional and classical martial arts is that they are taught one step at a time. Each skill is learned in isolation and then slowly added to the others. Hand techniques are first learned in static stances, and only later combined with footwork. Lower and upper body movement is learned separately. Even sparring is first introduced in one-step partner drills.

I agree with the methodology and trust the process. The “trouble,” however, is three-fold. First, many of those who train never get to the stage where they really put everything back together. Regardless of their rank, or years training, they never develop fluid, functional life-protection techniques that combine all these separate skills seamlessly. Many of them go on to teach others, unaware of this important missing aspect in their art.

Second is the trouble of perception. People on the outside looking in rarely see anything being practiced beyond the isolated drills and techniques. Armed with this information (or lack of information) they conclude that traditional martial arts are of no use for real self-defense. Instead, the opt for the modern fighting systems that place more focus on “fighting” in the ring. This approach seems more realistic despite the obvious need for rules and safety that can make it little better than a game.

The real problem with learning to fight by fighting, no matter how realistic the environment, is that it is very hard to add new or improved skills to your arsenal. Once the adrenalin starts pumping and the opponent starts swinging, you will gravitate to the skills you already have.They are the only things you can trust. You may make modest changes over time as you learn from various wins and losses but, each fight is different, so you never really repeat anything. The results in most fights between untrained fighters is predictable. The person who is most aggressive and most committed, overwhelms and dominates the opponent. End of story. This sounds a lot like dog fights. Dogs aren’t taught skills, they are taught aggression. That approach in humans might look something like the Jet Li clip below.

Traditional martial arts are designed to make you a better fighter than you are, through a slow and deliberate process of breaking down and improving every individual aspect of movement. Once these techniques have been re-engineered, they should be put back together into the sort of free-flowing movement that that works in a real fight. This is not easy, and it takes patience.

Lack of patience is the third and possibly biggest “trouble” that this approach to learning has to deal with. In the face of so many modern fighting systems, all screaming that they are the best, fastest and easiest to learn, us traditionalists have a tendency to start putting things together too quickly before we have really perfected the parts. Sadly, this means that when we are thrown in the ring, none of our skills can be trusted together and we end up back where we started, fighting like beginners. This is why one sees so little advanced technique in sparring. People learn it through kata, but never practice it to the point where it really works. When the fight begins, despite all the time they have spent training, they discard it completely.

So, if you, like me, believe in the step-by-step approach, I suggest an exercise this week that I find helpful. You don’t have to go back to doing each piece all by itself (although that never hurts) Instead, as you run through a kata, try and isolate one aspect that could be improved. It might be your breathing, your off-balance stance, your telegraphing of technique, or any of a thousand other things. As soon as you recognize one issue, focus on it to the exclusion of everything else. Keep doing the entire kata if you want, but don’t worry if the rest of it falls apart, or if you get moves wrong. As long as you stay focused on the selected issue, you have a chance of improving that part. Then you can move on to other parts. And there are always other parts…

Isn’t the real problem tedium combined with not understanding the personal goals for training? Classical training methods require patience. You will not always know how each piece fits but you have to trust that it does and work hard to perfect it anyway (“wax on, wax off”). It takes a lot of discipline and faith to do that when the payoff might not occur for months or years. Learning piano or guitar are examples that come to mind. Classical training methods will mold you into a true musician and offer you a deeper experience and love of music, yet few people have the patience for it because their goals are not clear. Some people think they just want to play popular songs (or attract women, see: http://www.spring.org.uk/2013/05/the-incredible-dating-power-of-a-guitar-case.php).

Most of the people I know who learn classically did so because their parents dragged them to piano lessons every week as a child. Is outside coercion really necessary to learn classically? It probably helps. Maybe challenging the individual’s “big picture” goals at the beginning will make classical training methods endure for more people. Recognizing smaller payoffs within each step might help combat the tedium, or having a teacher show how the piece will come together in the end.

Hello. Great insights you have there. I think karate sensei should look for ways to regularly address the “fluidity” issue. Maybe aside from a step by step “eternity-like” repetition of single techniques, a regular practice of actual sparring whether that be one step or semi-freestyle would work well. Also, the sensei should be able to teach/impart the reason for every detail in the movement or kata. These things serve purpose and should also be practiced in a controlled manner or in a freestyle method 😀

Thanks for the comments and please feel free to share the article. I think the idea of more freestyle practice is good but the students must still focus on the proper techniques and this is often hard unless they have already practiced the individual pieces a lot. Putting them together too soon will cause confusion and they will regress to whatever has worked for them in the past.

Hey Adam,
Shortly after I got my first degree I moved to a place where no one trained in my system. This forced me to train on my own. Thus I did exactly as you said. I would do three kata five times each in the basic form. Whatever move I first noticed felt “funny” I’d focus on for the rest of the katas. I often found the same “funny” feeling in many of the katas I was doing and thus was able to “correct” that once for all the occurrences. The offshoot of this is that it helped tie all the kata together in a more cohesive way when I began to see similar moves in each kata.
Luckily for me I learned a “family” kata that changed everything for the twelve basic kata we do. The “family” kata was all fluid and movement. I focused on the first dozen or so movements of that kata and then went back to the twelve and looked at how to make them all fluid. This made all the difference for me personally.
When teaching I go through the kata then work multiple techniques from the kata constantly referring back to the parts of the kata that apply to the technique. Then you run the kata again in that same class and you will often see some fluid motions that were not there before. Sometimes it works. Sometimes more nin tai.
Glenn

Thanks for the comments. I think the key to your training method is recognizing that “funny” feeling when it happens and knowing how to make those corrections. That self-awareness comes from first working the movements a lot in isolation. Those that try to put things together too soon can’t “feel” the mistakes. But, we have to put things together eventually or it is all for naught. Keep the comments coming. It is nice to have your voice in the mix.

Yep. How many times does that voice, sounding suspiciously like DP, say just one more time – mou ichi do!
That is just one of the beauties of training when you find something “new to you” and lose all track of time playing with this newfound toy.